German troops heading to Turkey-Syria border

Published: 06 Dec 2012 11:26 GMT+01:00

The German government said Thursday it had approved participation in a NATO mission to deploy Patriot missiles to help member state Turkey defend its border against Syria and will send up to 400 troops.

The foreign and defence ministries said in a joint statement that the mandate, which is expected to be presented to parliament early next week, would run to January 31, 2014.

NATO on Tuesday approved Turkey's request for Patriot missiles to defend its border against Syria following a series of blunt warnings to Damascus not to use chemical weapons.

German Defence Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the troop deployment would help stabilize the region. "The deterrent serves to ensure that the [chemical] capability does not become an intention," he told reporters.

NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance's decision reflected a "steadfast commitment" to preserving the security of its 28 member states.

The alliance said that Germany along with the Netherlands and the United States have agreed to provide the Patriot missile batteries, which would come under the command of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

"Turkey is currently the most-affected partner in the Syria conflict. It is exposed to a potential threat from Syria," the ministries said. "The deployment of Patriot air defence systems in close cooperation with the Netherlands and the US underlines Germany's reliability as an ally."

Turkey is a vocal opponent of the regime in Syria, where monitoring groups say over 41,000 people have been killed in almost 21 months of conflict.

Having Deutchland be the NATO-representative (along with Nederland) is a strong message to the Syrians that their actions have international attention. Two charter members of NATO will be representing Western interests in an easy-to-understand way.

I don't really think that the Syrians want to attack Turkey, that is just dumb. They might over-pursue people running from their military, though.

Good work by the German leaders in making a point without exacerbating the touchy situation.

Git' em. Git that there Ass-sad. Hes a mean sucker. Boy I seen it on TV. He like that there Sodom-insane and n` that Ayo-tollah o Rock o rolla mullah guy over there in that Sawdy A Rab place. They all got them turbans with funny moustaches n think they are all that- so let`s bomb em n let God sort it out later. Hell, they got freedom fighters over there n they need some help! Ya`ll know them guys that look kinda like terrorist al kida but are really good?

Rep-Dem fake paradigm Red Herring. Both Demo-rats and Republi-cons are for the AF-Pak-Iraq-Libya-Syria-Iran military campaign, regardless of "War Protesters". Both parties together are the war party. We all know that Mittens would be doing the same thing right now.

@Der Grenadier

Immigrant/wedge issue Red Herring. Germany as a member of NATO crime syndicate is obliged to defend fellow member Turkey under Article 5 of the treaty.

@Englishted

Turkey is the staging area for Al-Qaeda and other Saudi and Qatar financed Islamist terrorist franchises that are being used by NATO to overthrow Assad. The Patriot Missile defensive posture must be viewed within the whole context, which is an offensive foreign insurgency attack on the sovereign nation of Syria.

In October 1994 i was on a NATO exercise in southern Turkey boardering Syria and Iraq. I was there at the times of the much reported cross border raids by all kurdish group in the region. I'm a British Soldier who was put on exercise in the area as a Turkish political cusion. The day NATO forces withdrew from the region, columns of Turkish T72's roled deep into northern Syria and Iraq to take control of the Kurdish uprising and saught to gain a permenant foot hold in the name of protecting it's people.

2012 sees the involvement of Germany and other nations being used under the NATO banner in the name of protecting the Turkish People. I'm afraid that having been in a similar boat 18 years ago i can't pull myself to believe that Turkey has any other agenda than to again step foot in northern Syria. Not to help the syrians but to again try and gain a foot hold in the kurdish regions for it's own evils.

I think that you are spot on regarding the Turks and their motives regarding Syria and its Kurdish territories. We can only speculate what the powers that be have promised the Turks in exchange for their co-operation in this NATO-Salafi Jihad insurgency op. The question is, what have the Kurds been offered? And not only the Kurds in Syria but Iraq as well. Will this all blow-up in the Turks` face? Somebody is going to be double-crossed.

You and others might like this article by Pepe Escobar on the "Kurdish Spring":

The only problem is that the dawn of WW3 is taking too damn long, hurry it up! I cant take much more bloviating of fiscal cliffs, green energy, reality shows, conservatives, liberals, war on women, war on gays, fat capital cats ... HURRY IT UP WHY DONT YOU!!!

My first post on this thread was sarcastic, but usually I am trying to point out the contradictions, fallacies and outright propaganda of the mainstream media/PSY OP narrative. In my other posts on this thread I have linked to articles that shed some more light on the Syrian crisis, and I hope that the TL Peeples will check them out in order to get a little more background on this topic.

I find it surreal that on the one hand, we are asked to give up our civil rights and liberties in order to gain security through the War on Terror; while on the other hand NATO has always been allied with Al Qaeda and other Salafist terrorist groups and is supporting them now in Syria. So I`m going through the TSA naked body scanner because of Al Qaeda, but.....hmmmmmmm.

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